by John Brooke
The children, their minder, the nuns, the man, they all looked familiar too. Familiar in a bad way, all expressing this something Donald felt he glimpsed everywhere but couldn’t see.
Faces flowing together. One message everywhere in Donald’s Montreal.
Turning east on St. Catherine, he crossed Frontenac, then Iberville and swept up along the overpass. The river hurried along beside him, big, cold, all business, flashing teal glints under the intermittent sun. In his rear-view, the full span of Pont Jacques Cartier loomed over the Ferris wheel at La Ronde. Donald pulled over, got out and stood on the overpass, above the dirty train yard. The November wind cut through his jacket, whipped and flicked his hair. His eyes watered, his nose ran. Gazing back toward downtown: the bridge was undeniable, its webwork of steel crossing through the sky like an acrostic hieroglyph signalling CIVILIZATION. Its companion, the one named after Champlain, was two miles upstream and out of sight. Yet Donald could see it, echoing back, mais OUI!!!
Part of it was guilt. Donald felt his instincts had tricked him and was ashamed of having let it happen. Now he was guilty of seeing all the wrong things, caricatures, faces from a past that had nothing to do with his life. Or Pascale’s. And he knew they weren’t all living under Lucien’s spell. The numbers proved it: Lucien’s side had lost. But the numbers also said they loved him. She loved him, that was sure. How to see it right? He watched a rusty tanker heading out of town, downriver to the sea, the slow sweep of its mass, stern-wise, negotiating the long bend then disappearing, so gradual, then absolute. Despair flooded in again. Lucien was making Donald’s journey feel like wasted time.
The other part was a creeping mistrust, an abiding anger that stoked it.
It this what Catholics in Belfast see? Do all Orangemen look the same?
Donald looked around, shivering. A grizzled man with no legs came motoring along in an electric wheelchair, jacket wide open, brandishing a large can of beer in one hand while guiding his chair with the other. Demented eyes locked on Donald’s as he passed. Grinning, he raised his beer — Salut! There was a homemade sign attached to his chair. Donald read, Last Days of Montreal… Right out of his mind, thought Donald, like he’s daring this damn place to do its worst.
The man beetled eastward, shimmering, exuding degradation.
Donald should have turned around and gone home for lunch. Instead he followed. Maybe it was all a man like him could do, to break it, the spell, this fantasy of history.
7.
There was a parade of junkie hookers lined along the curb to greet him as he entered that dying stretch of St. Catherine Street. The first three leered. A fourth could hardly walk. She swayed out into the road, her ankle buckled over a cheap pink stiletto heel. She stumbled and a bus heading back downtown almost killed her. But she spun out of harm’s way, laughed like it was all part of some evil circus act, got her thumb right back out and into Donald’s passing face. No thanks, no thanks… But here was one strolling the park at rue Dézéry. Something about her attracted Donald. Not so wasted looking. Deep blue eyes still flashed a playful sparkle. Donald recognized something and stopped.
She sidled over, checking for police, then got in. “Bonjour.” Donald pulled back into traffic.
Her name was Francine. “Alors, what can I do for you today?”
“Make love,” he said. Francine had to laugh.
“That a problem?”
“You make love wit’ your wife, monsieur.”
“I don’t have a wife,” lied Donald, which caused the pute to laugh some more. “Baiser then. Jesus! How much?”
Francine named her price and asked, “What’s your name?”
And Donald told her, “Donald.”
“Donald.” Francine smiled as she repeated it. “You are the first one I catch today.”
“Am I a fish, Francine?”
“B’en non. Un anglo, un fédéraliste!”
Donald took his eyes off his driving. Who the hell was this?
“Un Non, n’est-ce pas?”
“So?”
“Ici,” she ordered. He turned up Joliette… “Ici.” …and made a right onto Adam.
It had once been an elegant part of the city, all four- and six-plex apartments, tall, with large windows, the wood and metal work custom-made by long-gone craftsmen. Never Outremont, but people had worked and they had lived well. Now it was the poorest riding in Canada and falling apart. The cusp of winter set this fact in stark relief: peeling facades, rusted stairs, the balconies seemed denuded, trying in vain to hide their cracking, grungy poverty behind the empty branches. Donald reflected on wasted value. And the fact that they had voted Oui.
Beside him, Francine appeared to be staring at the sky. “See anything?” he asked.
“Oui.”
“What?”
“Lucien.”
“Flying?”
“B’en non!” Did Donald think she was dumb or something? “He just stand there with his cane and watch. Comme un…how do you say in English — berger?”
“A shepherd.”
“C’est ça… Stop here!”
He pulled over. Francine said, “Pass me sixty dollar.”
“You’ll get sixty dollars. First we go in.”
“Not here, Donald. I need to buy something first.”
“Voyons, Francine, we’re not that stupid!”
“You think we are not honest? J’suis honnête!” Francine folded her arms, defiant. This too was a look that was universal. But Donald believed he needed what she was selling and so, after a minimal standoff, doled out three twenties. “Deux minutes,” said Francine.
He watched her go down the lane and disappear behind the rows of houses.
For twenty-five minutes, Donald sat and scanned the sky for signs of Lucien.
Then he got out and went down the lane. There was a woman, older, straight but brittle, out in the chilly air, hanging sweaters on the line. They eyed each other the way strangers in alleys will. The woman sized Donald up and seemed to relax. She secured the last sweater, picked up her laundry basket and headed back inside.
Donald said, “Je cherche une fille. Est-ce qu’il y a une fille dedans?”
Standing at her kitchen door, the woman said, “It’s all right, you can speak English. No, there is only Robert and myself.”
“She called herself Francine.”
She nodded, as if knowing. “You must not think she stole from you, this girl.”
Donald asked, “You know her, then?”
“B’en, we are all compatriotes, monsieur.”
“You’re not the first person I’ve heard say that.”
“Then perhaps it is true.”
“So what should I think?”
“That you have lost your way? That you do not know who you are dealing with.”
He told the woman, “You speak very well.”
She told Donald, “It never helped. Forty-five years I sold those teacups for Timothy Eaton’s sons. They were good to me, but they would never let me rise…move up, tu sais?”
He nodded. He asked, “Are you bitter?”
“No,” said the woman, “I am only old. And you?”
Donald would not answer that. He was less than subtle in his efforts to see into her kitchen.
She stepped aside and motioned. “See for yourself.”
Her kitchen was clean, mostly white, locked into the past by furnishings and appliances brought home on the employee’s discount all those years ago. There was no Francine.
A man, as elderly as the woman, came through from the front, rake thin, deep brown eyes still striking despite his age. He was silent as he faced Donald. The woman stood beside her man. “This is Robert.” Donald was thinking they would have made a handsome couple, these two. They still did. She said, “Robert was raised on rue Aird. Myself, I grew up at the corner of Adam and Nicolet.”
Donald responded dully, “It used to be a good neighbourhood.”
“And it will be again,” said
the woman. “Lucien will bring it back.” She seemed sure of it.
Her Robert folded his arms, never moving his eyes from Donald’s. Another defiant one.
The woman asked, “And so, do you still think I am not honest, monsieur?”
“I think you’re not telling me the whole story,” said Donald.
“I think you do not want to know this story,” replied the woman. “Pas d’histoire magnifique pour les sourds. Eh?”
Donald turned to leave. There was a small crucifix on the wall by the light switch. There was a dollar-sized photo of Lucien taped to its base. Confronting it, Donald’s hurting soul was rattled, feeling desperately fragile, like a china cup from Eaton’s in a pattern for a wedding shot to hell. This was how it was: Lucien had invaded Donald’s eyes. He held steady, managed a dry sniff. “That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”
The woman contemplated it, as if she might agree. “My Robert believes, monsieur. Au revoir.”
She did not expect Donald to apologize for his intrusion. His insinuation. And he didn’t.
How could he? Why should he? Was his story any less magnificent than hers?
Safely back in the car, Donald was left to think about it: a man come in search of history’s dreams, now sitting in the broken end of Montreal, out sixty bucks, trying to believe in his wife’s hopes and trying to hide from them at the same time, guilty, bitter (oui, madame), needing to reconnect with the vital thing (notre couple!) that had been Donald and Pascale, but failing, blocked by a glowering messiah. It was a question of imagination. Where does theirs end? Where does mine begin? Donald clasped his gut and breathed. It was for his own safety: the anger was building again.
He breathed and eased away from it. He drove back down to St. Catherine Street and drifted along, carried in the sporadic stream of midday traffic, mulling, looking. The one o’clock news said it was now sure Lucien would be coming back from Ottawa to be anointed Premier. Of course, thought Donald, it’s perfect, the life of a saint has to be perfect. After the news, Jane came back on for the phone-in. Today Jane wanted to know: If You Could Talk Personally To Lucien Over a Beer, What Would You Say To Him? Donald wondered, What would I tell him? What would make Lucien listen? What would make sense when there are people like that woman and her Robert? Or that Francine?
What would he say if I told him about Pascale?
A caller from Lennoxville was telling Jane how she would tell Lucien her forebears were Loyalists who fought for Canada and that she would spill her beer over Lucien’s head. Donald pulled over at the corner of Culliver and ran for the phone booth there. He inserted his quarter and punched in the number. Breathing deeply, struggling for calm: he would tell Lucien about the books in the Westmount Library, about Champlain and the river, and children and the things they believed.
Damn!…busy. Well, bound to be, so many souls with these things they needed to say.
Donald pressed the redial. And again. And again. And —
There was a woman in a doorway leading up to apartments above a grimy depanneur and a hairdresser’s that had gone out of business. She was looking out at the greying sky, unsure. She appeared to be on her way out — had combed her hair and put on a skirt and coat. The skirt was cheap, and too flimsy for the weather, but it was attractive: white with large black polka dots. It flowed around her thin frame and succeeded in creating an illusion. But it was her black hair, the sallow colour of her skin and well-constructed face that got to Donald. When she noticed Donald staring dumbly from inside the phone booth, she sent him a waif-like smile.
He forgot about Jane, replaced the phone and stepped into the street. “Tu travailles?”
“Oui.”
“Combien?”
“What do you want?”
“Baiser.”
“Normalement, sixty…” Then, looking thoughtfully toward the foreboding sky again, she shrugged. “Forty.”
“OK,” said Donald, suddenly calm, suddenly there.
So she led him up two flights of grotty stairs and into her pathetic room. “What’s your name?”
“Donald.”
“I am Josée.” Close up, her midnight hair was dull from too many drugs and it smelled of smoke, but she had parted it at the side and it fell across her cheek exactly like Pascale’s. Tired blue eyes perused him from under sleepy-looking lids. “You, you are Toronto?”
He asked, “How do you know that?”
“Your face,” said Josée.
“But I live here!” blurted Donald. “Ten years!” And he wanted to know, “What is wrong with my damn face?”
She said, “You pay me first.”
When Josée took off her clothes, the remains of any illusion went with them. He considered her unhealthy skin, her decaying smell, the needle bruises up and down her stringy arms and along her stick-like thighs. I can face it, thought Donald, ruination’s where I live. He peeled his off pants and lay down on her grey sheets. The place was freezing. Soon everything was numb except the part of Donald given into Josée’s specific care. He rubbed her bony back, trying to create some warmth.
Because Donald wanted to communicate. He wanted to let Josée know that she and he were victims. Drugs, politics, they both sap the spirit, thought Donald, and create deadly separations between a person and the world he thinks he knows.
Josée looked up and asked. “Are you nervous?”
“No, no, just cold.” But Donald wouldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t care. None of them cared. I can think it though, thought Donald. I’m the client. It’s still my goddamn story!
“Maybe you should go back where you come from, Donald.”
“What do you mean?”
“Toronto. Go back there. More better chances there for you, I think.”
“How do you know?”
“C’est évident.”
“Like obvious?”
“Voilà.”
It left Donald soft. He propped himself up on his elbows. “And what about you?”
“We will have a country and I will be transformed.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s all in the mind, Donald. Like my body, n’est-ce pas?”
“It’s not right!”
“C’est comme ça.”
Josée got back to work. Dreams are dreams, but sex is sex; his body responded. They coupled.
Josée dressed with Donald and accompanied him back down to the street. There was nothing to say, now they’d finished their business. She offered a half-smile by way of parting, and headed off, east. Donald reckoned she was going to buy what she needed to keep the world at bay. As he got to his car he saw Josée’s dull face suddenly brighten. She waved. It was that legless guy in the electric wheelchair, still tooling along, working on another beer. The man raised it to acknowledge Josée’s wave and stopped. Josée gave him a kiss on both his hoary cheeks. He gave her a hit of his beer. Then they headed east together, gabbing away, Josée the junkie hooker and the broken crazy man.
Donald saw it again, painted in red across the back of his chair: Last Days of Montreal… He took three steps, needing to follow, but came jerking to a halt, his nerve-ends mixing, surging — then suddenly locked tight.
Josée and her friend kept moving away from his eyes. The words on the sign grew indistinct.
All that remained for Donald to contemplate was the hole through his battered heart, the residue of resentment drifting, translating everything, including the air.
8.
Donald kept driving, following the river, further eastward, to the park at Pointe-Aux-Trembles. In those first great days he and Pascale would always stop here on their bikes to rest, to feel the sun and watch the water. Today there wasn’t a soul. He got out of his car, opened the trunk and lifted out his old duffel bag, the one that had faithfully carried his hockey gear for more than half his lifetime. Today his gear was back at the house, scattered on the basement floor. Donald slung the bag over his shoulder and walked to the river’s edge. At the embankment he
climbed down from the lawn to the shore and began to fill the bag with stones. Because the thing in the bag was lighter than air.
The sky had gone from blustery to bleak. They were calling for snow that night. Without the benefit of sunlight, the waters rolling past him were a brownish silver, a silty green. When the bag was suitably weighted he stood and began to swing it, getting a feel for its heft. Feels all right, thought Donald; with a decent wind-up he was sure he could hit the dark spot twenty metres out, where it was deep and there would be lots of current to carry the vestiges of his foolishness away. Francine’s lie. Josée’s dream. A City worker’s contempt. An old man’s faith. His own misplaced presumptions… Donald kept swinging the bag, back and forth, adding his anger, guilt, regret.
His heart asked: What about Pascale’s hope? Should we put that in too?
He ignored this elemental question. Damn thing better sink, thought Donald.
He became aware of two kids watching from the edge of the embankment. Brothers, it looked like; five? six?…too young to be wandering around without their maman. They stood there. Donald had to nod bonjour. One small voice demanded, “Que fais-tu, toi?”
“It’s my cat,” said Donald, in English — and sent the bag flying. It sailed, an amorphous shape that had no business existing, hung suspended for one moment in the gloomy sky, then dropped into the churning swell. Donald counted three — and it went under. He climbed back up the riverbank. The two boys greeted him. Donald responded to their dark and baleful eyes. “Mon chat, il est mort.”
“C’est quoi son nom, ton chat?” asked the older one.
“Lucien.”
“Et toi, comment tu t’appelles?”
“Donald.”
They nodded in unison, weirdly savvy as to Donald and all that he might represent.
They peered at the river and up at the sky. Donald grunted, “Salut,” and headed back to his car.
